I promised I'd post again before 2 months were gone ... and here I am, 6 weeks later, keeping my promise.

Man, it's been a busy 6 weeks. We hired our casting director, the brilliant and charming Judy Bowman, and spent several days casting. Genius actors, one right after the other, came before us. Gang, I gotta tell you: hiring a casting director is worth the money. In the old days of posting an ad in Backstage ..? You meet some great actors that way, but, oy! The proportion of yahoos and maniacs is just way too high. I loved having someone else deal with the crazy people, and only having to meet mostly talented, professional actors.

That's been the thing we've been adapting to most on this show: the idea of actually paying people to do things, rather than trying to do everything ourselves. Okay, we're not all the way there yet -- we're still interviewing all the crew members on our own. And we're still doing most of our own location scouting. And getting releases. And payroll. But this time, you won't catch us editing the thing ourselves. Or doing the taxes. Or designing the poster. Some stuff, you gotta leave to the pros.

But that means, of course, that you're going to be paying for stuff that's never going to be on the screen. On Ultrachrist!, nearly every dollar we spent was up there on the screen. Of course, we didn't spend much, but you see my point. This time there's insurance, and legal fees, accounting. It's hard to get used to the idea that that money just goes away -- it ain't paying for a cool crane shot, or a great prop. It's just the cost of doing business.

But I'm being inconsistent. In one breath I marveled at the joy of having other people do the work for you, and in the next I bitched about how expensive it was. That's the game, I guess. Anyway, we're having a good time, so that's what's important. Shit's falling into place ... we're schedule to start shooting in three weeks, and I have no reason to believe things won't go nice and clean like.

I'll try to post again soon and introduce you to the people we're hiring. We have a terrific DP, and some brilliant actors from stage and screen. All people we're very excited to be working with. Once the paperwork's signed, I'll add their info to the Web site.

Till then ...